Open AccessMaintaining land and life in Vanuatu: Indigenous alter-natives of recovery following the Manaro eruption on Ambae, Vanuatu
Author(s) -
Foley Pfalzgraf
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
journal of environmental media
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2632-2471
pISSN - 2632-2463
DOI - 10.1386/jem_00053_1
Subject(s) - indigenous , centrality , government (linguistics) , geography , futures contract , land rights , politics , political science , ethnology , environmental planning , environmental resource management , history , ecology , business , law , linguistics , philosophy , environmental science , mathematics , finance , combinatorics , biology
Between 2017 and 2019, the Manaro volcano on the island of Ambae in Vanuatu erupted consistently, leading to two compulsory evacuations of the island’s communities. The eruption was only one of many ecological emergencies unfolding in Vanuatu as climate change continues to affect the islands. Amidst these overlapping crises, community leaders and the national government leveraged customary tenure practices to develop a system of customary reunion and secondary homes for evacuees. An analysis of 54 articles from the Vanuatu Daily Post ’s media coverage of the Manaro eruption and disaster recovery from 2017 to 2019 reveals the centrality of customary tenure. While political ecologists have illustrated how disaster recovery policies can become disastrous in and of themselves, this article elaborates upon alter-native disaster recovery practices in Vanuatu and affirms the centrality of land control to Indigenous and settler futures.